the room of my childhood is austereThe things in the house are gathered in even piles,like firewood prepared since summer for the cold season,a ritual repeated at regular intervals.In front of the mirror I always see the same person, absorbed in plucking out her white hairs,then sweeping them up from the floor with moistened fingers.

There is a dull, muffled pain in all this, like the last chords of a sad melody thatwe usually anticipate, as if we’ve heard them before.

"Good morning, Mist Man!""Good morning, magnet-girl!"

From under the ice, from the internauts’ realm, from the earth and from the air I receivehidden signals.

Yes, it’s a countdown all the time:60, 59, 58, 57, 56, 55, 54, 53, 52, 51Adipocere.And I didn’t even make a wish and I didn’t even pray for anything.

memories of things that never happened…without you I’m a zero and other nonsense like that, tranquilising and nothing else

Black and white photos with android-children like me.A man shouts on the background with a dir en grey voiceIt makes a hole in the ground.Something’s not right, but there’s too much mist to see just what.Frames from cartoons, playgrounds that don’t comply with safety regulations,young parents arguing, undefeated teenage idols,my brother’s voice telling me stories made up on the spot,

flowing quickly down the drain like the gypsum in the gauze for the bandage held under the

tap. How is it even possible for me to register the changesfor it not to hurt physically,for it to be like carbon monoxide –no detectable smell, just mute death.And, every now and then, reports of missing persons.

neutrinoI wanted to know whether I’d survive in the night life, stumbling among cars, looking forreactors,but I felt like I was in a film, like I did many times when I got lost,the yellow car disguised as a taxi will come and pick you up,when I lost control,

like the transvestite exulting in the middle of the uninterestedcrowd, the lab plant transplanted into a natural environment

- people who malfunction at long distances, who lose their sense of orientation when the jamming signal comes in, the lip-smacking or noisy yawn of the one holding onto the same rail -

like the madman on the train who stomped his feet and mumbled, that I pictured kissing little girls on the mouth, defiantly,people generating phobia and helplessness

I would have liked to be like the bombed factories,calling their workers back to work after the warlike a building filmed before the start of theimplosion around me, the same people – the filmkept runninguntil the person next to me suddenly broke down

I take overI answer meekly any time they look at meI overflow, I accept the graftI answer placably like in a transplant

(is anyone here ?)THIS IS A TEST. person jumping headfirst. into thevoid-________ch ch ichstu ckto the single room of anapartment in a 45/storeyapartment blockI Don’t Speak theLanguageno stImuluSthe dust and thereflectionstoo dangerous to ventureousde outsidee nothing is alivenothing in the microwaveIsleepwiththetv onnoOnemakesmybed the closetis emptyto put my foot on dry land damn it to get out of this roomalready

I was wrong. I don’t enjoy closenessShe mimics sincerity, she never goes all the way with the probeshe doesn’t push it into the nose or the ears, not to mention other shamefulorifices her round outline is reflected in three or four colourful stripesevery time she passes by the mirror.

in the evening the fish scales get a washed-out, dead shine.

Each time I see her, I imagine what she would look like withplasters stuck over her breasts, or even more, with a gag in hermouthand her tongue pulled out forcibly.The more she sniffles, the more I add of the black paint andpull the censorship-strip over her eyes. After touching her skin, I feel the need to wash my hands.

fangs and clawsThere were some clothes left on a bench, in the park. Clean clothes, justforgotten. I felt the urgent need to put them on.A stranger stopped and smiled at me –I would have liked it to be like that, but without the haughty dark messiah voice

Click click click.I must now enter the simulator.In there I touched someone else’s property. I put my hand on it and imagined it belonged to me.(I touched somebody else’s property. I imagined it was mine)The toilet smelled strongly of sweaty sex from the person before.

North is a state of mind

The New Children were born nine months after the Big Blackout.There are people who keep the lights out for their sake and dry their hair overnight.(Viktor Johansson)

compared to the ones back home, I’ve become an intellectual mole andI have the privilege of having been able to retire into the basement full of moths.it must sound spectacular, but in our parts the alarm that used to warn sailors of an imminentstorm still bellows and the roar is heard all over town each month, on the first Tuesday, at the same hour.it’s a wailing whale,it’s the voice of the flamethrower:"you were born, prepare to die."

I shut all the windows and start to count

in this town I am a muscular man with a cracked skull and his nose full ofblood, retreated in a hotel lobby,an F student that has climbed onto a beam to scare histeacher a black fruit seller stretching his legs onto the stalla fat woman speaking a Slavic language and sweating heavily in line with her sisters in the zumba class

Heart’s Joywith all my nerves stretched out, crinkled like old elastic bands, I swear nastily on a bicyclelane, while I leave the town and enter an industrial area where no one has set foot in years, I yell swearwords in the “Heart’s Joy” community at the edge of town, with houses all in a rowand decorative lanterns in the windows, birdhouses and food, shelters, laughter, pillow fights, toyshanging from the chandelier, spinning above a cradle.

the little blond girl, throwing the colourful beach ball into the sky.

stretches of waters, silver and white, broad and large and calming surfaces and swearwords. tv shows, silence. every now and then, I steal a glance at the window, at my shadow at the window.it’s an old man around sixty, who only moves from there in the evening, when he goes tobed. apart from that, we almost wave, at nine we’re both ready and able, each day we assume ourfighting pose.

the grey outside is constant. it has a fixed formula: x grams of water, x grams of carbondioxide, little man at the window, housewife dreams, quiet mountains, quiet dreams, quiet flicker of life’s amber.at times like these, think of the thinwall, of the even thinner windowstanding between you and the snowstorm outside,think that it’s only five centimetres thick,that if it wasn’t there, you’d be standing in the middle of the storm.think of how cold you'd be.

chemlab

after Kenjo Siratori’s blood electric

the port to a mechanic universe the body distorted from embryo stage the game hasbeen t ransplantedthe embryo-shaped drug has been transplanted the soul machine has been attached to thesuicide linesince thenthis is the new that we never knew was here the dna channels the machine’s ki l l ingintent the chronical suicides’ lineI absorb and inhalethe glassy eyes slide over objects Iget tangled in recombination structures I eliminate life and my headthe case that used to also store and defend the braincontinues to sing to erode the body empties itself compulsivelyeliminates lifebut no, no, no bodily f luidsI need a bare, blank background that can accelerate the exterminat ionthat can empty the infobytes that got stuck right above the gland yes I like to waste timelike thata generator machine, overloaded, screaming

Gabi Eftimie (Luduș, 1981), who has also signed as “greenplastic,” debuted in 2006 with the volume ochi roșii polaroid / acesta este un test (Polaroid Red Eyes / This Is a Test), which earned her the România Literară debut award. It was followed this year by Nordul e o stare de spirit (North Is a State of Mind). In 2011, she participated in the Uppsala International Poetry Festival.